Category Archives: Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Canada

I read the remarks made by Superintendent Julie Dickson of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Canada (OSFI) to the 2013 Bloomberg Canada Economic Summit on May 21. True enough, it doesn’t say much for my social life, but nevertheless, it made for an interesting read.

Interesting because I searched a few words to get the gist of her comments. Not surprisingly, the winner was – you guessed it – bank (33), followed by interest (15), financial (14), rates (13), market (10), mortgage (8), risk and real estate (4) with insurance (2) and profit (1) rounding out my random count.

What dismayed me was that other than the word household (2), which I guess is what us ordinary people are called in those circles, there was zero (0) mention of the words family or families, Canadians, people, home or even money – never mind health or well-being of any of the above.

Maybe we need a Superintendent of Working Canadian Families, someone to present our case and our cause at summits to business leaders in the financial sector who rely on our debt to earn their living. Just maybe.

Canada has a well-funded Bank of Canada, a well-funded Canadian Bankers Association, a well-funded Canadian Real Estate Association, a well-funded well, you get the idea… Macleans reports the top 10 lobby groups on Parliament Hill here. You won’t find the words ordinary, working or family in that list either.

Towards the end of Ms. Dickson’s remarks, she states: “Low growth affects employment rates and the standard of living. The crisis demonstrated the importance of the safety and soundness of banks…”

I might argue that those sentences should be revised to read instead, “the importance of the safety and soundness of banks is of greater concern than the employment rates and standard of living among ordinary Canadians – hence, there is no growth – and that is the crisis.”

It’s all in how you say a thing it seems, and nobody’s saying anything on our behalf, at least not officially anyway.

If anyone out there is brave enough to make the speech, I’ll help to write it because we’ve got alot of make-up games on the schedule ahead.